Issue link: https://kusm-wichita.uberflip.com/i/1024595
9 They're two of the biggest issues facing physicians right now and closely related: pain management and opioid use disorders. KU School of Medicine-Wichita (KUSM-W) is helping equip the state of Kansas to deal with them, and not just by training students and residents. The mechanism is Project ECHO, which uses videoconferencing technology to link pain management and addiction experts with health care providers in communities across Kansas. KUSM-W is one of two hubs for ECHO, the other being the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, which launched ECHO in 2017. KUSM-W co-sponsored two of ECHO's series on pain management and expects to play a similar role in an upcoming series on opioid abuse and addiction. "Obviously there's a lot of overlap in pain management and opioid overuse, and at the same time, they're very separate issues," said Rick Kellerman, M.D., chair of the school's Department of Family & Community Medicine. "These are two very complicated problems that we're dealing with in medicine right now." The payoff in terms of patient care can be seen in the project's motto, "Moving knowledge, not patients." Project ECHO, a collaborative model of medical education and care management, was created at New Mexico State University and brought to KU in 2015 by Eve-Lynn Nelson, Ph.D., director of KU Center for Telemedicine & Telehealth at KU Medical Center. Nearly 75 physicians and other clinicians from around Kansas took part in the pain-management series. Chronic pain is the biggest reason patients seek care. "Obviously, this is a very complex and important issue," ECHO project director Carla Deckert said. "I think the exciting thing about the pain series was that because the School of Medicine in Wichita joined with the School of Medicine in Kansas City, we did a good job of making sure everybody knew about it." The ECHO series consisted of 11 one-hour videoconference sessions in which interprofessional specialists from KUSM-W, KUMC and Kansas primary health care professionals discussed patient cases. They learned about the latest evidenced-based research on treating the patient in chronic pain and, through their discussions, learned from each other. Topics covered ranged from team-based approaches to chronic pain management and the proper role of opioids in treatment to non-opioid treatment strategies, goal-setting and patient engagement. Amy Curry, M.D., clinical assistant professor at KUSM-W's Family Medicine Residency Program at Via Christi, and Tiffany Shin, assistant professor at KU School of Pharmacy-Wichita, led a session on documentation in the patient's record. Other KU faculty taking part in the sessions included Ashley Crowl, clinical assistant professor at KU School of Pharmacy- Wichita; Daniel Warren, M.D., KUSM-W's new addiction specialist; and Kellerman. Connects physicians with KU School of Medicine-Wichita experts on pain, opioids Daniel Warren, M.D., and Rick Kellerman, M.D. PROJECT